


born as a blackthorn tree (wanna fuel the pyre of your enemies)

by aletterinthenameofsanity



Series: if we're going down in flames (take a bow) [2]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, District 7, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Lots of it, M/M, MENTOR SPARRING, Male-Female Friendship, Minor Character Death, Multi, POV Steve Harrington, Polyamory, Psychological Torture, Rebellion, Steve won the 71st Hunger Games, Steve&Robin are cousins, Torture, but here we go, never knew i needed a Steve&Enobaria friendship, post-Quell, torture tends to bond people together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-11 21:04:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20160076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aletterinthenameofsanity/pseuds/aletterinthenameofsanity
Summary: They ask Steve questions he doesn't know the answers to and he usually screams from the pain, but sometimes he just laughs in their faces. Without the Quell, they're desperate to maintain some sort of hold on their Victors, to find some sort of way to still get something out of the people they thought they'd made into their personal pawns, but Steve isn't giving them what they want.Because here's the thing. He doesn't know where Nancy and Jonathan are, only that they're not here and that the Games never happened. He knows that Robin is in the cell on one side of him and that Enobaria is in the other.All he knows is that he knows the Capitol, and he knows that if Nancy or Jonathan had died they'd have told Steve, used it as a way to torture him. Nancy and Jonathan have to be alive.So he won't give them information he doesn't know, and he won't give him any of the small details he does have. He's not gonna give these fuckers any hints on how to get to Nancy and Jonathan. He'll let them peel him open, burn him alive, have their way with his body, and he won't give them any of Nancy or Jonathan's vulnerabilities.He won't give them Nancy and Jonathan, point-blank.





	born as a blackthorn tree (wanna fuel the pyre of your enemies)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lorata](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorata/gifts), [scoutshonour](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scoutshonour/gifts), [Silvershadowe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvershadowe/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Devil You Know](https://archiveofourown.org/works/728148) by [lorata](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorata/pseuds/lorata). 
  * Inspired by [A District Upside Down: The War](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10303184) by [lorata](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorata/pseuds/lorata). 

> Title is from "NFWMB" by Hozier, which is my number one favorite song for Stoncy/Hunger Games AUs, and it fits better than maybe anything else for this 'verse. Also recommend "Bottom of the River" by Delta Rae for the fighting scenes/Thirteen scenes, because it really works.
> 
> Also, me, not having seen anything of Season 3 save compilations of the Scoops Troop on Youtube: let's see how my new fav gang would escape the Capitol, eh
> 
> Also, mentor sparring is and forever shall be one of my favorite HG concepts either, and I have to give thanks to lorata for it. I can't write it nearly as well as they can, but here's my version of it anyway.
> 
> Also also, thanks to lorata, Silvershadowe, and scoutshonour for the absolutely *beautiful* comments they left on the last fic. I cannot express how much those meant to me. I might have squealed with joy in the break room at work when I first read them and had to explain to my co-worker why I was so excited. So, thank you!

_Your veins are screaming_

_I am alive_  
_I am alive_  
_I am alive_

_and you will learn_  
_to love_  
_the sound_  
_of surviving._

** _― [Michelle K](http://www.michellekpoems.tumblr.com/)_ **

It takes only a couple of days for Steve to realize that they’re torturing him and Enobaria with the same girl: his lover, her Victor.

At night, sometimes, he can hear Enobaria growling Nancy’s name just as he does Nancy and Jonathan and Robin’s. Nancy is the one person in the world Enobaria cares about, the one person she's developed a bond with. It makes sense that the hallucinations would draw on that connection, would turn it into a weapon to be used against her.

Steve latches onto that scream, onto that name pouring from Enobaria's lips when they slice her open and torture her.

Some nights, Steve can’t tell what’s real and what’s fake, beyond the angry screams of Enobaria in the far reaches of his consciousness, beyond the all-too-real Arena around him and the fear-filled screams of Nancy and Jonathan and Robin. He can’t tell if those are real or not, but he knows that when the Two Victor screams, sheer fury bleeding from her voice, he knows that she’s not a hallucination driven by trackerjacker venom.

Enobaria’s anger is something to hold onto, in a way that Robin’s whispers of home in the next room over sometimes are.

So he stares at the ceiling, biting back pain from the newest torture (they started raping him last week, which to he honest he's been used to for years at this point so it wasn't that hard to tune out), and focuses on that scream. On that lovely reminder of reality, of the woman who laughs at their guards and spits in their faces. Of the woman who brought Nancy home from the Arena years and years ago. 

\- 

They ask him questions he doesn't know the answers to and he usually screams from the pain, but sometimes he just laughs in their faces. Without the Quell, they're desperate to maintain some sort of hold on their Victors, to find some sort of way to still get something out of the people they thought they'd made into their personal pawns, but Steve isn't giving them what they want.

Because here's the thing. He doesn't know where Nancy and Jonathan are, only that they're not here and that the Games never happened. He knows that Robin is in the cell on one side of him and that Enobaria is in the other. He knows nothing about the Rebellion or where Nancy and Jonathan are, knows nothing at all about anything beyond this cell other than the fact that Nancy and Jonathan have to be alive.

All he knows is that he knows the Capitol, and he knows that if Nancy or Jonathan had died they'd have told Steve, used it as a way to torture him.

So he won't give them information he doesn't know, and he won't give him any of the small details he _ does _ have. He's not gonna give these fuckers any hints on how to get to Nancy and Jonathan. He'll let them peel him open, burn him alive, have their way with his body, and he won't give them any of Nancy or Jonathan's vulnerabilities. He won't tell them about how Nancy's ticklish behind her knees, won't tell them Jonathan's favorite recipes, won't tell them the ways that Nancy and Jonathan like to cuddle.

He won't give them Nancy and Jonathan, point-blank.

So he laughs, sometimes, when they torture him until his laughter eventually evolves into screams, and in the rare quiet moments he'll hear Enobaria's tired voice on his side. "Finally gone mad, eh, Seven?" she asks, a half-false arrogance curling her voice, and he just smiles at the ceiling, feeling the new wounds itch on his limbs and the new bruises tear aches through his ribs. Maybe the Capitol interrogators finally broke something this time, who knows?

"Pretty sure I've always been this way, 'Bari," Steve says, having heard enough rumors in the Capitol to know that it would have basically been sentencing himself to a mauling if he'd called her that face-to-face. No one in Panem save possibly Nero, her Mentor, is allowed to call her that, and maybe not even him.

(Steve does have to wonder, though, if Enobaria would let Nancy call her that. The two women have a very strange yet close relationship going on, one of mutual support, respect, and understanding. Maybe that strange Two mentor-Victor bond would be enough for nicknames.)

"I've watched your Games, pretty boy," Enobaria says, a hint of irritation to her voice, an edge of insanity, and just a little bit of something almost fond. As if in the absence of her Victor, of her protege, she’s getting almost a little bit attached to him instead.

(Steve certainly can’t blame her for that.) “You were a little bit mad then. Probably more than your dear partners.”

Their relationship is a fact that the Capitol well knows, not even something they have to torture out of Steve, so he knows that Enobaria isn’t giving up any new information that he’s refused to reveal. “Nah, I wasn’t mad then.”

“Bashing in the heads of a bunch of children with a thorny baseball bat? Not exactly ripping their throats out, but it took a decent amount of ingenuity and insanity to pull that one off.”

Steve thinks about that, about how she’d ripped that boy’s throat out with her teeth before her teeth were even weapons, about how they labelled her the maddest Victor that had ever come out of Two. He thinks he understands her a bit better now, even more than when he was already a Victor. He understands the madness that can lay dormant in one’s mind until one hits one’s breaking point.

Enobaria went a bit mad in the first Arena. Steve’s going a bit mad in this one.

“When we’re all out of this place,” Steve says, “I’m gonna invite you down for Midsummer. You and me and all the kids in here and Robin and Nancy and Jonathan and their families. We’re all gonna pig out and act stupid and don’t worry, I’ll have a vegeterian option.”

Steve can hear the almost-admiration in Enobaria’s voice when she says: “Steve Harrington, you are a strange creature.”

Steve smiles through the pain of the most recent round of torture. “Glad to be.”

-

Nancy's a mountain, strong and unmoving and protecting. Jonathan's a trainline, constant and reliable with a schedule to arrive and depart by.

Steve's a blackthorn tree, waiting to be cut down and burned to provide support and warmth for those he cares for. He is ready to burn, to be burned, for the family he loves. For the family he came into this world with, in his cousin Robin, and the family he's made for himself in Nancy and Jonathan.

Steve's not an idiot. He knows he's most likely going to die here in this too-white cell only dirtied by his own blood and filth. His words to Enobaria are just that- pretty words meant to bring humor into a place without such luxury, meant to stave off the pain for just a moment.

The Capitol interrogators continue, and he gives them as little as possible. They burn him. They cut him. They electrocute parts of him. They rape him. They beat him and drug him and pry him apart and try to break him- 

But Steve has endured the Arena. He has endured years of prostitution in the Capitol. He will endure this. He _ has _to endure this.

He will either die (increasingly likely) or he’ll get out. Simple as that. There are only two ways this ends. 

* * *

Then comes a time where Steve’s interrogation is rather different. It’s not just him getting dragged into a white-walled room and drugged, then tortured- this time, he finds himself getting tied back-to-back with Robin, and for the first time in however long he’s been here his blood freezes in his veins, because this isn’t just about him, it’s about his little cousin.

But then he thinks about Nancy and Jonathan, about his first Games as a Mentor and how they had to hold him through it, how he broke and they had to put him back together. He can’t let that happen with his cousin, who only got dragged into this because she’s related to him. He’s the Victor- she’s not. It won’t do either of them any good for him to fall apart.

“Nice to see you again, gorgeous,” Steve says with a bit of a chuckle as the Capitol interrogators prepare the drugs they’re gonna stick them with.

“You’re not looking too good yourself,” Robin says, and Steve tries not to think about the glimpse he had of her as they were both dragged in here, of the black eye she’s sporting and the limp she's walking with that he hopes to god was from bad electrocution or some kind of beating.

(Oh, by Panem, please tell him that they didn’t use her like they did him. He’s a whore, he’s used to it, she’s just an eighteen-year-old who’s never left Seven before.)

“Ah, you insult my obvious beauty,” he replies, despite knowing that he's been incredibly beaten and ruined by this whole process. He can feel the aches covering his body which must spell at least _some _damage. What matters, though, is bracing himself for the pain and reassuring Robin, who never should have been here in the first place.

"Come on, cousin," Robin says, and he can hear the attempt at reassuring _him_ in her tone. Fuck, that's pretty fucked up- he's the Victor, the guy used to killing and pain and blackmail. She shouldn't have to be trying to reassure _him_.

"Shut up!" one of the guards barks, and Steve doesn't want them to hurt Robin so he obliges.

But then, before they've even landed a hand on Steve and Robin besides injecting them with some sort of souped up Capitol drug, one of the interrogators' communicators rings. To Steve's shock (and, it's hard to surprise him after everything he's been put through since they were imprisoned after the Quell), the guard checks his communicator and says, "We're needed in Block Four."

And then both the Capitol guards take off and _leave the fucking door unlocked_.

"You've gotta be fucking with me," Robin says after they've wriggled their way out of the bonds (much easier to escape than the chains trapping them in their cells) and gotten to the door, with a handle that's loose and unlocked.

"I'm taking it and running," Steve says, because he learned very well in the Arena that stopping and thinking when you're in a volatile situation can often spell injury and death.

Robin shrugs. "Okay."

They swing the door open and the heavy weight of it slams into something- or someone- on the other side. Steve freezes for a moment, drugs slowing his thought processes, but then steps forward and pulls the door a bit closed, allowing the two of them to look around the other side.

“Ah, _ score_,” Steve crows as they find an unconscious Peacekeeper on the other side, a baton and a keycard hooked to his belt. Steve scrabbles over the body to grab the supplies, trying to ignore old memories of him doing the same thing to dead tributes’ bodies, then passes over the baton to Robin.

She raises an eyebrow. “You’re giving this to _ me_? You’re the Victor.”

“And you can swing an axe like no one’s business,” he says, and maybe his thinking’s a bit compromised by the drugs but he’s escaped an Arena before and this can’t be too much different.

Robin grins, swinging the baton a bit to test the weight of it. “Alright.”

Now, Steve can barely think through the haze of drugs currently in his system, but he knows that he can't leave Enobaria behind. She’s the closest thing that Nancy’s had to family in her years as a Victor, as Nancy hadn’t seen her brother since before she Volunteered, and Nancy’s definitely the only family Enobaria has.

(Steve’s never been one for leaving people behind. He’ll do anything he can to save as many people as he can.) 

“We have to get the kids and Enobaria out,” Steve says, and his tiny little cousin, who's never fought a day in her life but still somehow has the sharp edge in her gaze that Nancy does, nods. "Now, which cell do we try first?"

Robin's gaze alights on the key card in his hand. “Whichever one that guard’s card opens.”

They open up Dustin Henderson (grandson of Mags, boy tribute for District Four)’s cell first, and the kid is sporting a few cuts across his cheek and a decently impressive nosebleed but he seems otherwise okay, especially considering the way his eyes focus on the key card in Steve’s hand as they enter. 

“Alright,” Dustin says, “You need to get Erica out, then come back for me. Then I can soup up this key card for you.”

“What? Why?” Steve asks, still admittedly a bit slow due to the drugs.

“She can pick locks,” Dustin says, gesturing to the chains that the Capitol has pinning him down. “I was already signed up for an alliance with her- learned shit that way. Cell to the right of me.” He seems to be staring at them with a bit of irritation in his eyes. “C’mon, we don’t got all day if we’re going to escape.”

Steve looks at this child for a few seconds longer before heading off to obey his instructions. Steve swipes open the door to Erica Sinclair (granddaughter of Seeder, girl tribute for Eleven)’s cell to find the little girl already out of her chains, foot tapping with anticipation. She zooms out the moment he opens the door, glancing around to see that they’ve already opened Dustin’s cell, then heads over and picks the locks on Dustin’s chains.

They move on, and then they hit the first dead body in the next cell. It’s Mags Henderson, who had more tributes make it out alive than any other Victor, who started the training academy in Four, who knew how to wheel and deal Sponsors like no one else. She’d had a stroke the year before Steve had become a Victor, but she’d always been nice to him and had actually given him a few pieces of advice on how to court Sponsors.

She’s lying on the metal cot with a bad burned patch across her chest, and Steve’s pretty sure that she must have gone out due to electrocution. The room is rather cold, almost like a morgue, and Steve has the sour feeling that she didn't just die recently.

He glances back at Dustin, who just swallows deeply. “We’ve gotta- we’ve gotta move on,” Dustin says, and he seems to be handling this decently well, but he can’t help but stare at his grandmother’s corpse for a few extra seconds as they move onto the next cell. Still, the kid seems to be handling it all pretty well.

The next cell is that of Lucas (grandson of Seeder Sinclair, the boy tribute from Eleven). His nose is at a bit of strange angle, as if it was recently re-set after it was broken, but he otherwise seems pretty okay. Erica, his little sister, darts in and picks his locks, and he gives her a brief hug as they head out of the cell.

Then, after that, they enter Seeder's cell, and Steve's heart squeezes a bit when they find her dead. He had very few interactions with her- her tributes usually died as quickly as his did, going out in the Bloodbath- but he does have one rather vivid memory of his Victory Tour, where her grandson- Lucas and Erica's cousin, Steve's pretty sure- had given Steve a small apple during the Victor's luncheon with the previous Victors of the District. The boy couldn't have been more than four-years-old, and it had been the singular kind thing anyone did for him during his Tour, save for Jonathan and Nancy's actions at their own stops. Steve still remembers Seeder's warm brown eyes and smile as she'd told him to enjoy her grandson's apple.

Now Steve gets to see her, dead in her cell, and this is starting to get to be almost a bit much. Killing those kids in the Arena was one thing- those were strangers in the way of his survival. Mags and Seeder were people he already knew, people with names and faces and families and stories.

Steve looks over at Robin, over the other kids' heads, and he thanks Panem that at least both him and his cousin are alive, that they managed to endure everything that the Capitol put them through. Neither of them is as old as Seeder or Mags, thus able to survive a bit longer under torture, to outlast the pain just a little better.

Then they get to the last cell, and Steve knows they've probably got to hurry but there ain't no fucking way he's leaving Enobaria behind. He swipes the key card across the door, letting it swing open to reveal Enobaria, as dark eyes blazing as intelligent as always despite the sallow tint to her dark skin.

"You ready to get out of this place?" Steve asks Enobaria with a huge grin, and she flashes a mouth with half of its teeth pulled out. Her bloody gums are far from the most gruesome thing he's seen, though- he's been through the Arena, after all- so he doesn't flinch as Erica darts forward, picking the locks on Enobaria's chains, and the oldest Victor left in this hellhole stretches, cracking her knuckles.

"We gonna get those bastards?" She asks, eyes dark, and Steve's a Victor and a child-killer but he knows he's not half as insane as Nancy's Mentor.

Still, he nods. "We've gotta escape, first."

Enobaria nods. "Who's left?" Enobaria asks, gaze calculating as she looks over their little group.

"Seeder and Mags are dead," Steve says bluntly, because these kids already know that their grandmothers are gone. "We've got us and the kids left." He gestures behind him to Robin, still holding the baton that fell from that one guard's belt, Erica with her lock picking tools, Dustin with his hacking fingers, and Lucas with his makeshift slingshot made from parts of things left behind in the cells. Not the most intimidating army in the world- he's pretty sure only Lucas has the skills to win the Games, but only Erica would have the stomach to, so all four of the kids would have died in the Quell- but it's better than nothing.

Enobaria's expression twists, and Steve doesn't know if it's in grief over losing two such two esteemed veterans or irritation over losing two assets to escape. "You and I are the only Victors in here, then."

Steve nods. "But the kids have some skills. Erica can pick locks, Robin's handy with an axe, Dustin's got a hand for hacking and coding, and Lucas has mad skills with a slingshot."

Enobaria actually smiles with her mouth shut- which, Steve has to guess, is a bit easier with a lot of those knife-sharp teeth missing. "We've got the perfect army, then," she says, and glances through them. "Got anything to use as a weapon?"

"We've been mostly collecting from the rooms everyone's escaped from, as well as a guard or two that might have been, well, helped into unconsciousness by us."

"We knocked them the fuck out," Erica simplifies, and Enobaria turns an open-lipped grin on the girl. Seeder's granddaughter definitely has balls, Steve's gotta admit- Erica reminds him of Nancy in her more ruthless moments, or even of Enobaria herself. Maybe Erica _ could _ have made it out of the Quell, if the bigger kids had knocked each other out of the running first _ and _ she hadn't had to kill her brother. She's got a talent for adaption and a stomach for violence that not many twelve-year-olds that Steve has met have.

“Good job,” Enobaria says, and Steve knows that she’s not one to give out praise. Ever. Then she gets up, and she barely shakes, which is pretty impressive considering just how starved and dehydrated they are in here. She heads forward with that Career grace and, quick and deadly, checks through all of the cells. She exits into the hallway for a brief second before returning moments later, a baton of her own in one hand and a whip in the other. She glances over the team as she tests out her new baton, something almost protective entering her gaze. "Alright," she says, "Time to leave. Seven, you take the back, I'll take the front. Eleven-Boy, with the slingshot-" And she points to Lucas. "You're directly behind me. Four-boy, you with the hacking skills, behind him. Lock picker, you're behind hacker. Seven-Girl, you head in front of your cousin."

"Weapon for me?" Steve asks, raising a hand, and Enobaria tosses him the baton, leaving herself with the whip. Not her weapon of choice, as far as he remembers, but he knows that _his_ weapon of choice was a bat so the baton will suit him rather well- something she must remember.

"Now let's get going," she says, and they all fall in just as she suggested, in a formation that will keep the most vulnerable in the middle of the group and those with weapons closer to the outside, with the two Victors- the two proven killers- on the outside.

They make it a few hallways on their own, taking out a few Peacekeepers along the way, but there are an almost suspiciously low number of Peacekeepers and guards along the way. Even Steve, in his drugged mind, notices that- these hallways, leading to the torture cells that the Victors and tributes were kept in, should be packed with guards so that they don't get out.

Then, finally, there's a distant blasting noise and moments later a group of people in gray uniforms hurries into the hallway. Enobaria draws back her whip-arm, ready to strike, but Lucas speaks up first.

"Max?" Lucas gasps at the red-haired girl in the front of the Peackeepers, and she grins at them. Steve recognizes her as Billy Hargrove's little sister, the girl tribute for Two for the Quell. That must mean- shit, are these the rebels?

"We were just on our way to rescue you," she says, "We're with District 13. We knocked all the cameras out."

"Dude..." Robin says to Steve, the Capitol drugs slurring her speech a bit. "That must have been what distracted the interrogators- the rebels breaking in."

"We've gotta get you guys out," Max says.

"Then do it," Enobaria says, no-nonsense as always, and Max gives her a hard smile.

"Sounds like a plan."

And so they follow the rebels out of the building, navigating through a number of back hallways. Steve keeps hearing sounds of fighting in the distance, but they never encounter any resistance from Peacekeepers or other Capitol guards so the rebels must have done a pretty good job orchestrating this whole thing. 

Once out of the building- which, hey, clean air for the first time in who knows how long- they all pile into the hovercraft and are immediately directed to a windowless room near the middle of the ship, one with stacks of clothing sitting on shelves. "Clothes for all of you," Max says, looking over the hospital-esque gowns that they're all wearing, covered in grime and bodily filth. "We can get you guys showers once we've got to Thirteen, but for now, we can at least get you new clothes. Let you feel a little more normal."

"I'll stay at the door to make sure that no one walks in," she says, and gestures to the stalls on the sides of the room. "You guys can get changed there."

Lucas looks like he wants to thank her, but Dustin grabs the other boy and they all duck into their stalls to change into gray and beige uniforms similar to the ones the rest of the rebels were wearing. Max stays by the door to the giant room, facing the door with her gun up, while they change.

Then, not moments after they're all done, another rebel pulls open the door. "We've got new orders. We can't go straight to Thirteen," one of the rebels says, "They need us for the fight in Six." He looks over them with clear doubt. "Can any of you fight?"

Steve exchanges a grin with Enobaria, and he's not entirely sure if the drugs aren't fucking with his brain but he finds himself not much caring. "Can we fight?" He says, "I'd say we've got some experience."

The rebel was probably making some sort of comment on their physical appearance, not their abilities, but Enobaria gives him an open-mouthed smirk and he doesn't say another word. Instead, he just gives Max a nod. "We'll be touching down in less than twenty minutes," he says, and Max nods back at him.

"We'll be ready," she says, a confidence in her voice that must be a combination of her training in Two and however much time she's spent with Thirteen must have imbued her with.

\- 

They land close to the battlefield in Six, and as they get out Steve can see the way that Enobaria's gaze lights up with recognition in a way that the kids' don't- probably from her Victory Tour.

"Over this way," Max says, checking her communicator and gesturing them forward, and they ford past multiple streets and buildings until they hit a large cluster of rebels, some of which look up when their mixed group of captives, Victors, and rebels arrives.

And there they are dressed in rebel beige and gray, the people that Steve’s been burning himself alive for. They’re carrying guns and dressed down from their usual Capitol fare. This isn't the Nancy and Jonathan of the Capitol, dressed up and made up and made pretty for the benefit of the twittering Capitolie audiences. This isn't the Nancy and Jonathan of their apartment, gentle and soft and comforting. 

But this _ is _the Nancy and Jonathan he fell in love with, and Steve would recognize them anywhere, even on a battlefield.

This is the Nancy he fell in love with, blood on her fingertips and fire in her eyes. This is Nancy, the trained killer and markswoman who takes the world by its balls and tears apart the entire world to save those she loves. This is the woman who fucked her way through the Capitol and emerged unbroken, who was punished for being too clever for the Gamemakers. This is Nancy, with her beloved gun finally in her hands as she tears apart the government that turned them into bloodied, broken things.

This is the Jonathan he fell in love with, who would burn the world down to protect his brother, who took a knife and butchered five children in order to make it home to his brother, who burned a mutt alive in order to survive. This is Jonathan with a prosthetic hand because a mutt tore his real one off in the Arena, who watched Game after Game and never shed a tear for the tributes he failed to bring home.

There is no passionate kiss when Steve sees Nancy and Jonathan for the first time in who knows how long. There is no giant hug with a long monologue about the power of love like there always is at the end of those Capitol rom-coms.

There is just Steve winking, saying, "You miss me?" and something relaxing in Jonathan and Nancy's faces.

“You’re back,” Nancy says, something almost like a sigh of relief in her voice as she takes a shot at a Peacekeeper over top of Steve's little gang's shoulders.

"Yeah, it's me," he says, something buoying his chest despite the fact the war going down around them. Here is Jonathan and Nancy, who he burned alive to see again. His voice lilts in a teasing way: "Don't cream your pants." Then he sobers a bit, or at least as much as he can with drugs still in his system. "Mind giving me, Enobaria, and the kids weapons?" Steve asks Nancy's team, which Steve is just know realizing contains Katniss Everdeen. Blame that oversight on the drugs.

They quickly hand them weapons, weapons far better than just a slingshot and a couple of batons. They get knives and guns, and in Enobaria's case she even gets a couple of wickedly long daggers handed to her by Nancy, who gives her mentor a quick smile.

And then they launch into a fight to take Six. 

Steve doesn't have a bat this time around. He's just got himself a knife, a baton, and a gun handed to him by a couple of rebel soldiers.

But this is still an Arena. This is still a fight for survival, just this time it's not just his survival that's on the line. It's Lucas's and Robin's and Erica's and Dustin's and Enobaria's and Nancy's and Jonathan's. 

Something sings in his veins as he fights alongside Nancy, Jonathan, and Enobaria, carving their way through Peacekeepers and Capitol soldiers. (Steve's not a fool- he can't see the kids, but he's sure they're finding some sort of way to fight in the battle too, no matter what Enobaria and Steve instructed them.) The four of them are all former Victors, all proven killers with blood staining their hands and driven just a little bit insane by the Arena. They’re _ good _ at fighting, at knowing how to fight and hurt and _kill_.

Steve doesn’t pay much attention to Nancy and Jonathan as he fights, but he does pick up small details. Nancy’s as good of a shot with a gun as she always mentioned that she was, while Jonathan’s using a gun with similar (though not entirely as proficient) skill as Nancy, something he must have learned in the Rebellion. They've both grown in skills since their time in the games, using weapons that they didn't use in the Games. They blaze their ways across the battlefield, taking out as many enemy soldiers as their reputations would demand.

It takes a long time to get out of the battle, to wade their ways to the outside of things, but they eventually get it done. District Six has fallen, and Katniss Everdeen apparently has a propaganda team to take care of video shots of a lot of it. He hears her making a speech, but he doesn’t much care about the specifics as he is about finding out where the kids and Enobaria ended up.

The kids ended up fighting in the battle, just like Steve told them not to. Robin’s baton cleared a few peacekeepers, and it turns out Lucas’s skills with a slingshot easily transferred over to a gun. Dustin and Erica had worked together to wire together some makeshift grenades and had taken out a good dozen Peacekeepers that way. Not bad for a twelve-year-old, two seventeen-year-olds, and one eighteen-year-old.

He finds himself hugging the kids as he gathers them all to a meeting spot beneath the rebel hovercraft, affectionately calling them "you lil' shits," a nickname that garners a few minor protests but mostly fond smiles.

At the end of the day, though, Steve and his little troop of the survivors of the Capitol's torture cells find themselves on a hovercraft back to Thirteen, Katniss' propaganda squad in another room on the craft while Nancy and Jonathan join Steve's troop in this room. Steve, in his turn, is content to just watch as the kids are all able to finally take a breather, answering a few questions from Jonathan, who it seems has been put on reporting duty for the rebels.

"You survived," Nancy says, a small smile playing at her lips while she speaks to Enobaria, who just gives her a small, proud smile in return as the elder Victor twirls a knife between her fingers.

"That I did," she says, baring her teeth, and Nancy doesn't flinch at the gaping red holes that currently comprise her Mentor's gums.

Steve looks down at himself. He's not pretty, not anymore. He's _ far_, far from pretty. One of his fingers is missing, replaced by a stump that itches against the stitches the Capitol interrogators gave him. His skin is lined with bruises and burns, with whip marks and knife wounds in various stages of healing. His skin is varying shades of shiny pink from burns, yellow and purple from bruises, white and dark brown from scars and healing wounds. He has at least one black eye, the lids half-swollen around his eye. His hair is buzzed, and even then some patches are just straight up _ gone _. He's an ugly mess, nowhere near the shiny Victor the Capitol won itself after the Seventy First Games. He is not the pretty boy who charmed his way through the Capitol and the Games, the boy who the Capitolites were so eager to fuck their way through.

He doesn't think that Nancy and Jonathan care, though, not with the way their eyes shine as they look at him, and that's what matters to him. He could care less what the Capitol thinks of him, when he has Nancy and Jonathan staring at him with such awe and love in their eyes, when they're the ones who hold him through nightmares and stand by his side and kiss him like their worlds haven't ended.

Jonathan finishes up the minimal paperwork and consultations with the kids and makes his way over to Steve, eyes wide in both awe and love.

"So," Jonathan says, and there's something wet and cracked in his voice as he looks at Steve. "You're alive."

Steve cracks a smile, ignoring the pain that he can very much feel now that the last of the Capitol drugs and the adrenaline from battle has worn off. “That I am.”

“Nancy’s been tearing apart Panem looking for you,” Jonathan says. “She’s the one who was behind the recon mission to save you.”

Steve looks at Nancy, beige jacket slung over her black body armor and wielding that gun of hers, and he’s never seen anything so beautiful in his life. “Never doubted it,” he says, because he didn’t. He didn’t doubt that Nancy, determined and fierce, who had been willing to become a whore to protect those she loved, would tear down Panem to find him.

Steve _ also _ didn’t doubt the fact that Jonathan was doing the same for him, either. Jonathan, the first outlier Volunteer, who was willing to go into the Arena and _ kill _ just to get back to his brother- Jonathan’s never been one to let things lie, either. He’s always been just as stubborn as Nancy, the continous mechanical push to her stubborn mountain.

Steve leans in and kisses Jonathan, and it aches because of all of the bruises on his face but he doesn’t much care. He doesn’t know how long he was kept in those Capitol cells, how long it’s been since Steve kissed Jonathan goodbye the night before the Tribute Interviews for the Quell, but damn, how he’s missed this.

Steve feels himself burn as Jonathan kisses back, as Jonathan leans in and places a hand on Steve’s waist and holds him like the world will fall apart if he lets go, and he knows that he’s never gonna let himself get separated from Jonathan and Nancy ever again if he can help it.

“Get a room, pretty boy!” comes a familiar call, and Steve pries himself away from Jonathan to find Enobaria rolling her eyes at him as Nancy heads over, a wide smile on Nancy’s lips. Enobaria’s gaze is a bit soft despite her taunt as she looks at him and Nancy.

"I'll try once we're not on a craft!" he shouts back as Nancy arrives at his and Jonathan's sides.

“So,” Steve asks, “What’s our new home in Thirteen like?”

“Not as big as the apartment in the Capitol, that’s for sure,” Nancy says, leaning in to press a quick kiss to Steve’s lips. “But I’m sure we can fit most of the children you’ve adopted in their as well.”

“What kids?” Steve asks, before glancing over at Dustin, Erica, Robin, and Lucas and blinking. “Right. Those kids.” Then he looks over at Enobaria and grins. “What about you, ‘Bari?” he shouts across the room, and Enobaria looks like she’s torn between murdering him and laughing at him.

“I’m gonna fucking take you out, Seven,” Enobaria says, and to anyone else that would look like a sincere death threat but Steve’s gotten to know the different tones of her voice over their shared time in the Capitol cells, and he knows that this is how she teases.

“Can’t wait,” Steve says, “As long as you get your teeth fixed first. Preferably with normal ones this time.”

He looks back at Nancy and Jonathan and finds his girlfriend staring at him and Enobaria with the proudest of smiles on her face. "So," he says, a flush entering his cheeks, "I might have made friends with your mentor."

"Good thing," Nancy says, and she sounds nothing but sincere. "Enobaria needs some friends."

"I heard that, Nancy!" Enobaria shouts.

"And so do you," Nancy continues as if she didn't hear Enobaria's comment, and Steve has to agree. Childhood friends disappeared the moment he became a Victor- other than Robin, he didn't retain a single friend from Seven after his name was Reaped. For years, all he's had has been Nancy and Jonathan. Enobaria isn't anything like any of the friends he had before, the relationship between them something he's hesitant to even christen "friendship," but it _is_ something, something he's plenty thankful for everything that they've been through.

-

After finding each other on the battlefield in Six, reconnecting on that hovercraft, they all move into Thirteen.

Things are going better, now. All of the kids are finding their roles in Thirteen- Robin’s training with Kali, from Katniss’ propos squad. Erica’s going to school in Thirteen, while Lucas is training with Will, Mike, and Max to be a soldier. Dustin’s apparently Beetee Latier’s new protege. And Enobaria’s a full-time soldier now, a member of Katniss’ propos squad. 

Things seem like they’re looking up, like Steve and everyone he cares about has finally escaped the reach of the Capitol. He and Nancy and Jonathan can live in their little barracks room with the two bunks between them, trading out which two of them are sleeping together and which one sleeps alone. He can kiss his girlfriend and boyfriend without worrying how the President is going to use this against them. He doesn’t have to worry about being used as a Victor whore, as such a concept seems to be utterly abhorent in Thirteen, where Victors are at least respected, even if they're not glorified like Katniss, Peeta, and Finnick.

Instead, he just gets to spend time with the kids and train with Nancy and Jonathan and Robin and just live a life without fear of the Capitol- a novel concept he is wholeheartedly enjoying. Life isn't perfect, here in Thirteen, but it _is_ pretty good, compared to the Capitol cells or even life in the Capitol before that.

-

But they didn’t anticipate the triggers.

-

It first happens three weeks after they've all arrived in Thirteen. Steve's in his room with Jonathan and Nancy, talking about the kids after lunch in the half hour they have between lunch and training, and a Capitol broadcast breaks through on the screen in the corner of the squad's bunkroom.

Steve blacks out, and he wakes up moments later to find Jonathan on the ground with red marks around his neck, gasping for air, and himself pressed up against the wall with Nancy’s standard knife against his neck.

“What the fuck just happened?” he swears, and Nancy releases him. He can see the furious tears glistening in the corners of her eyes.

“Of course it couldn’t have been that easy,” she mutters, reaching out a hand to help Jonathan up off of the ground.

“Seriously, guys, what the fuck just happened?” Steve demands, starting to get pretty freaked out. Why is Jonathan on the ground? Why did Nancy attack _ Steve _? They’re supposed to be safe, here in Thirteen. Steve’s well aware of the fact that not a lot of people like Victors, but they’d gotten out of the Capitol with their siblings and cousins and Enobaria. Things were supposed to be looking up.

“You just attacked Jonathan,” Nancy answers, and the roots in Steve’s chest burn right up. “Moment the propos came on.”

“No,” Steve gasps, staring at those red marks on Jonathan’s neck that must have come from someone- probably Steve himself- strangling him. Bile rises in his throat. Months in the Capitol torture cells and he didn’t give away anything to hurt Nancy and Jonathan, but now, he’s done the damage himself.

“Don’t blame yourself,” Jonathan rasps out through a damaged throat, “It’s gotta be the Capitol’s influence, somehow. We can take you to medical. Figure this out.”

“We didn’t spend months searching for you just to lose you,” Nancy swears, and the tears are disappearing in place of that famous Two-resolve. "Believe us."

And he does- he always has, from the night he first slept with them before his first appointment, first let himself burn under their fingers, and he always will.

-

Half an hour later, Steve finds himself locked up in a holding room with Enobaria, Robin, Erica, Lucas, and Dustin.

“Just like old times, eh?” Steve tries to joke, staring at these people who should have been free, should have been safe, but apparently all snapped out of their sane minds when the Capitol broadcast came on and tried to kill their friends and family. Robin attacked Kali, Erica attacked Jane, Lucas attacked Mike and Will, Dustin attacked Beetee, and Enobaria attacked Finnick Odair. Some of them came out better than Jonathan- Finnick definitely knew how to defend himself, Beetee has bodyguards, and Erica was pretty easy to pin down- and some came out worse. Apparently Mike and Will have some pretty decent black eyes, now, and apparently Robin had attacked while in the middle of kissing Kali, who’d had her guard down, at the time. Only Kali’s training had allowed her to knock Robin unconscious, but only after she’d left similiar choking bruises on Kali’s neck as Steve had left on Jonathan’s.

“The cells are a bit nicer this time, gotta admit,” Enobaria says, clear derision in her tone. They’d stripped her of all of her weapons when they’d put her in here, and Steve knows that Twos _ hate _not having a weapon on them. Nancy always kept a knife on her, the whole time he’s known her.

“No interrogation,” Erica says with a shrug, and no twelve-year-old should be this desensitized to this kind of shit but this girl is. “Looks like they’re at least more polite than the Capitol. But maybe they’re trying to bore us to death.”

Steve swallows at the word "death." If it hadn't been for Nancy's training, he just might have killed Jonathan in their room. He long ago became desensitized to death, but the idea of his family dying- that's something far beyond what he's become to numb to.

Enobaria, on the other hand, just grins. "Watch them try," she says, "If the Capitol couldn't pull it off with months of torture, I _doubt_ that Thirteen could pull it off with a few hours of quiet."

And then the door opens, proving her right- Beetee Latier enters, wearing that same pair of glasses that he made his signature decades ago, far before Steve was even born.

“All of you probably have triggers towards murder, implanted and primed by trackerjacker venom,” Beetee informs them, “But the only ones we can be completely certain of are the Capitol broadcasts.”

Steve feels like he’s going to throw up his stomach. He could turn into a killing machine at the drop of a hat, try to hurt Nancy and Jonathan and other people that he loves and cares about. All of that effort put into not giving up information on them, that certainty that even if the Capitol took every part of him they wouldn't have the people he loves- it meant nothing.

He looks over to Enobaria. The two of them are proven killers. Unlike the kids, who have knowledge but no kills under their belts except maybe the ones they pulled turning the battle, him and Enobaria have a serious number of kills under their belts outside of battle. They have proven that they will do anything to survive, will kill children to survive and commit unspeakable atrocities when put under the right circumstances. The kids can be fought easily, can be put down and covered for in the midst of a murderous spree- the two of them are a different beast. A different monster.

"How can we stop this?" Enobaria asks, gaze dark.

"Keep you all isolated from Capitol broadcasts until we can isolate all of the triggers you have implanted in you," Beetee says. "A few other minor preventative measures, as well, such as relocation of sleeping quarters and duties for a few of you." Beetee gives them an expression that could be equivocated with a smile. "The good news is that your triggers aren't the people you're with- you've been interacting with them without incident for weeks, now, and you've never attacked before."

Well, that, at least, is good news. Steve will be able to trust himself around Nancy and Jonathan and the kids, around Robin and everyone else he considers his family.

"That's good," Lucas says, and Steve can see the remnants of guilt in his expression. "We don't want to take out our friends."

_We just want to move on_, he doesn't say but Steve understands. Everyone in this room understands that sentiment- they all want to move past those cells, past the damage that was done to them, past the nightmares and the screams and the drugs and the torture. They want to contribute to the Rebellion and taking down the Capitol that captured and tortured them and killed those they loved.

There is something shared between those in this room that cannot be understated, something born in the screams in those dark cells and the bruises that bloomed on their skin. It sits in their shaved heads and Lucas' broken nose and Robin's limp and Enobaria's new row of teeth and the scar on Dustin's cheek and Steve's missing finger and Erica's half-blind right eye. It sits in nightmares and flinches at nothing and gritted teeth.

It sits in a determination to make the Capitol _pay_.

-

Steve sits back down on the bench in the holding cell, hours later. They didn’t want to put him back in a room with their precious Mockingjay, so they’re trying to find a place for him to sleep in the meantime. The kids were all allowed to return to their rooms alongside bodyguards (Steve hadn’t known any of the bodyguards save Kali, who’d elbowed Robin in the ribs and joked with her until Steve’s cousin had smiled), but Steve’s had to wait for new living arrangements.

Which leads to him, now, foot tapping against the floor and heart in his mouth. Jonathan's an integral part of Katniss’ propos squad, and it's very unlikely that he'll be moved. Nancy is similarly high-up in the recon section of the military, and Command will probably want to keep her in a room so close to Command. They're definitely moving Steve, but will they let him stay with his girlfriend and boyfriend in another room, or will they keep him alone?

“Alright, kid,” Enobaria says, sitting down next to him. “I know you’re from Seven and you don’t know what our practices are in Two, but I think it’s about time to introduce you to a couple of our recovery techniques.”

Steve fixes her with a gaze that finally lets her know how he’s feeling, rather than trying to keep up a facade for the kids. He’s tired and he hates knowing that he’s the reason that Jonathan’s in the hospital wing and hates this war and he hates being a killer and he _ hates_\- “What do you mean by that?”

Enobaria grins, showing off the row of perfectly normal-shaped white teeth they must have implanted in her when they first arrived in Thirteen. “You ever heard of Mentor sparring?”

Oh, he’s heard of it, alright- Nancy mentioned it a couple of times, in a longing tone that he never quite understood. Blight was his mentor, but he was just that, and he was twenty plus years older than Steve, by the by. Steve barely lived in the Village in Seven, anyway, spending nearly all of his time in the Capitol, in the beds of Capitolites. There was no sparring for him.

"Once or twice," he says, "Why do you ask?"

"You wanna try it out?" she asks, and Steve's not sure if she's breaking some sacred Two rule or something. He sure hopes not- he doesn't want to ruin something else for Nancy after everything that he's already done this afternoon.

"You sure we're allowed to?" he asks, instead of voicing all of his doubts and questions.

“We’re free to go as long as we bring one of the watchers with us,” Enobaria says, and Steve thinks about the guilt burning in his veins, the fact that he didn't give up info about Nancy and Jonathan but was still chopped down and made into a fire to burn them.

"Then let's do it," he says, giving her a smile.

\- 

Enobaria slams Steve down on the mat in the training area and his blood burns, singing out in a wonderful fire. He tackles her back, and for a few glorious moments they fight in a no-holds-barred kind of match he hasn’t had since he was back in that Arena.

Steve wasn’t born and bred in Two, where they learned how to give their children a chance at winning the Games. He won based off of despearation and Sponsors and his hand with an axe, not due to training or a Centre like Nancy did. This Mentor-Victor sparring isn’t something he ever got to expect. He never thought that anyone would understand him when he emerged covered in blood, his face carved open, and Nancy and Jonathan had been the best surprise in the world.

But this- this utter letting-go of everything, of just going at Enobaria with everything he has and her slamming him back down, reminding him that a killer is what he is but that there are others like him, Victors and killers alike, that he isn’t alone-

Steve almost feels like he’ll be safe around Nancy and Jonathan. If Enobaria can take him down, can pin him to the mats like this, then Nancy can do the same. Nancy and Jonathan are both like Enobaria, both understand what he went through in that Arena. They know what it’s like to be a killer, and they can take him out and take care of him if the Capitol broadcasts trigger them all again.

“Not bad for an outlier,” Enobaria eventually says when they’re done, when he's slammed to the mat and pinned under her arms. She doesn’t offer up a hand to help him up from the mat- no, he has to pull himself up, show her that he hasn’t lost that same strength that got him through the Arena.

“Not bad for a Career,” Steve returns with a sweaty smile, as he gets up and runs his fingers through his buzzed hair. It’s taken some effort to get used to it- he’s been wearing a lot of scarves and caps on his head recently, to cover up all the bald patches- but right now it feels more like a natural motion rather than a reminder of everything he’s lost.

(He remembers the President placing that crown on his hair, the way it had depressed his hair with the sheer weight of it. He remembers how his hair had been the thing to attract so many Capitolite customers. He's always liked his hair, but losing it isn't too bad of a change.)

Enobaria's gaze flicks up to his buzzed hair, and he glances at her own hair, which has been similarly buzzed. They're similar in a lot of ways, the two of them- they have survived Arena after Arena, lost a lot in the Games and the Capitol and those Capitol cells. They're killers who were tortured, drugged out of their minds, driven insane by the name of the same girl. 

"You're mad, pretty boy," she says, and she says it like it's a compliment, in a way that Steve understands.

"So're you, 'Bari," he says in that same tone of voice that she's using, and this time he can still feel the aches in his body from their sparring match so he doesn't think she's going to murder him.

He's right- instead of glaring at him, she glances at something over his shoulder. “I think your girlfriend and boyfriend _ might _ want to talk to you,” Enobaria says with a crooked smirk, jerking her head towards the other side of the room. Steve turns to find Nancy and Jonathan leaning against the wall next to the door. Jonathan’s changed from the gray clothes he was wearing earlier into a different beige uniform, of the color that Nancy usually wears here in Thirteen.

(Steve spots the scarf wrapped around Jonathan's neck, and he tries not to think about the bruises it's probably covering up. Unlike in the Capitol, where such a scarf would cover hickies, the scarf currently around Jonathan's neck is most likely obscuring what jacked-Steve did to him.)

Steve picks up his scarf from off of the ground and winds it around his head, covering up the bald patches and sweat, before stepping off the mat and walking towards Nancy and Jonathan. “We’ve still gotta have that Midsummer dinner,” he shoots over his shoulder as he walks over to Nancy and Jonathan, and he thinks he sees the hints of a genuine smile on Enobaria's lips.

“That was really hot,” Nancy says when he reaches their side, voice low, and Steve can’t help but grin. Even after everything that’s happened- the Games, the whoring, the Capitol, the Rebellion, the torture- he still has Nancy and Jonathan.

Steve can’t help but think of that first night, all of those years ago, when he’d been plenty awkward but eager to please. The three of them had fallen into bed together that night, the two of them trying to soften the blow that Steve had experienced the next night, and in the months and years after that they’d built a life together, carved out a space for themselves in their apartment in between Games and Victory Tours. And even now, after everything, they've still got this relationship that they built despite the Capitol's efforts to stop them.

“Thanks,” Steve says, “I think you’re pretty hot yourself. Both of you.”

Nancy steps forward and pulls Steve into a kiss, hard and passionate, and Steve sinks into it, feeling warmth rush through his veins. Out of the corner of his eyes Enobaria slips out of the room, and he makes a mental note to thank her later. (And maybe, if it isn’t violating some sort of sacred bond between her and Nancy, ask her if maybe she’d be up for another sparring match later.)

“So what’s the living situation?” Steve asks when they lean back from each other, and Jonathan grins.

“We’re living with Will and Mike and the kids instead of the squad, now,” Jonathan says. “Can’t say that Katniss will miss us in her room terribly.”

Steve can’t help the giant grin that breaks out across his face. “The kids?” As in Will, Mike, Jane, Max, Dustin, Lucas, and Erica, all of whom are sharing a room in the barracks together.

“They’ve got an extra bunk bed in there, and the rebels have already removed any speakers or tvs that might broadcast Capitol news,” Nancy answers, taking over for Jonathan. “Kali and Robin are switching rooms with us. Thought you’d appreciate it.”

Steve is certainly ready for Katniss and Gale to stop giving Nancy suspicious looks, that’s for sure. He knows that a number of outliers distrust Career Districts, but that’s a bit much. Nancy’s _ proven _ that she’s as staunch a rebel as the rest of them. 

“And as for the triggers...well, they took any radio feed out of the kids’ room,” Jonathan adds on, “And they’re gonna try to get you and Enobaria and the kids jobs that don’t involve access to regular Capitol broadcasts.”

“What about Dustin?” is Steve’s first response, because the kid’s got his dream job working with Beetee on hacking the Capitol. The kid’s got a gift for tech, despite growing up in Four.

“They’re gonna figure out a way to fit him with earpieces that will automatically filter out Capitol broadcasts, replace it with music from Four or something like that,” Jonathan says. Steve’s well aware that none of the three of them ever really got into tech so they don't know the specifics of how shit like that works. "They want his help as much as he wants to help."

Well, that's good. Steve's gotten decently close to the kids over the past few weeks since they arrived in Thirteen, and he's happy that Dustin's gonna get to contine doing what he likes. 

“But we’ve got a room and a bed and we’re here for you,” Nancy says, “We’re here if you get triggered. We’re here for _ you_, just as you’ve always been for us.”

Steve looks at these two people that he became a whore for, that he endured torture for, that he let himself get devoured by the Capitol dozens of times over for. He thinks about the fact that as he was getting cut down and turned into kindling for the Capitol to use against them, they were fighting to get him back. He thinks about the fact that he spent four years in the beds of various Capitolites for Nancy and Jonathan, to keep them safe.

And he pulls them both in close for a tight hug. He thinks he might be shaking, but he's not sure. All he knows is that here and now, after a sparring match and being held by the two people he loves most- this is where he finally feels safe.

And after over four years of pain, that's all he can ask for.

_ You should stop while you can trying to find peace in the sloping nothingness between your thighs. _

_ Stop writing prayers singing hallelujahs building temples for the concave valleys of your flesh. _

_ These are not things to cherish, these are not goals to be had. _

_ The burns and wounds will become thick knots on your tree trunked limbs and you will relish in the rings of wrinkles your fingers will allow. _

_ You will flourish in the years that were once guaranteed to be stolen. _

_ You will grow towards the sun. _

**-Michelle K.**

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you all enjoyed this one! It's a great deal less fluffy than its predecessor, but I still had a lot of fun writing it, despite the fact that I can't write an action scene to save my life. Feel free to leave a comment if you feel like it- they mean a whole lot to me, so much that I can't express.
> 
> (So, this makes over 1 million words posted on this account! Woo hoo! Can't believe that much was posted since just May of 2017, but that's not bad, eh?)
> 
> Also, I've written about 2000 words of the beginning of a sequel to this story- about the end of the rebellion, starting off with Nancy/Steve/Jonathan's wedding (instead of Finnick and Annie's, for various reasons starting with the fact that I actually already killed off Annie and Johanna in the last fic during various Hunger Games). Anyone want to read that?


End file.
